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Hey Guys. One of the goals on the Western Front Expansion is to make the secret mission cards less of a deal breaker. Getting a tough to accomplish mission is no fun as well. So this is the plan.

1-Allow discarding of one secret mission card per turn and then draw another. With the discarding does that feel like too much card churn? Would like to hear feedback on this. We did try other things, like a community pool of face up secret mission card but that didn't feel so..secret.

2-include many more cards with Western Front that are less powerful. These would help dilute some of the more overpowered cards. They will award rivets or deployment bonuses instead of always VP. Comedianmasta and others have really created some interesting and fun cards since the game release.

Again thanks for the support of the game and all that you have added to the community and fun of the game.

I definitely think allowing one discard per turn is a really good move. Currently, it's very easy to have cards that you know cannot be achieved depending on your opponent's play style: eg Kill a Hero, or a Tank when none are on the frontline. though wave2 should help these.

Having other rewards on Secret Mission Cards like Rivets/Deployment Points or even Strafing Runs at the end of the turn might be good to dilute the existing ones too.

Edit: I think keeping them secret is important, and having discards allows players to work out what their opponent has. Though not a core campaign mission, one of the Telberg missions works really well when only one player has Secret Mission Cards - It was brilliant when my opponent realized I needed to get 8 infantry into no-mans'-land and diverted their attentions to holding back my advance.

Have a good deal of cards also ensures each and every game is different. I don't think too much card chum is a problem. Maybe I would say more like One SM discrd per Game, that will help anyone get out of a serious SM rutt if they have any.

I also like the idea of a blind trade of SM cards, but again, the secret is kinda important to the feel. I enjoy the idea of the rivet and DP rewards as well but I feel it is the Point rewarding ones that push players to try strategies they wouldn't normally and to make the game a little more interesting.

EDIT: Also, I enjoy the Card Maker. I can't wait for Wave Two to see how they effect and or change the cards I have and how I can make more in the future using the aerial units as well.

1-Allow discarding of one secret mission card per turn and then draw another. With the discarding does that feel like too much card churn? Would like to hear feedback on this. We did try other things, like a community pool of face up secret mission card but that didn't feel so..secret.

2-include many more cards with Western Front that are less powerful. These would help dilute some of the more overpowered cards. They will award rivets or deployment bonuses instead of always VP. Comedianmasta and others have really created some interesting and fun cards since the game release.

Seems that a lot of players use this as a house rule anyway. I'm all in favor for more cards with less power. I added the user created cards to my deck and play the draw one extra card at the start of my turn but discard down to two secret mission cards and it seems to work well. Looking forward to seeing what you come up with next Ted.

That's the problem mixing official and self made cards, you will always be able to tell the difference. Ideally we could do with the jpgs of the originals and re-print them as well.

For people who like to sleeve their cards, I've come up with a way that's pretty hard to tell the difference between the original cards and the user designed cards. Here's what I did;

1. Downloaded Rivet Wars Community Action and Secret Mission cards (also used Comedianmasta cards)
2. Purchase a set of your favorite card sleeves. I've been using the Fantasy Flight standard European packs
3. Created a document template with two different image placeholder sizes - Page 1 > Front of card set to 8.8cm x 6.29cm, Page 3 > Back of card set to 8.9cm x 6.37cm (Note if you place a card graphic into your document and then scale down, make sure the aspect is locked so it doesn't go out of shape)
4. I have the luxury of a duplex printer so I lined up pages 2 and 4 with the opposite sides of the cards (hopefully this will make sense why in a second)
5. Get some manila folders (or similar thickness cardboard/paper) to slot in between your front and rear print of the card to give it stiffness. I cut mine approximately 7.5cm x 5.5cm so it doesn't stick outside my other bits of paper.
6. Place the three layers into your card sleeve.

Now, the reason why I printed front and back on all layers of the cards is be I wanted the back of the card (when it's laying face down on the deck) to be indistinguishable from the originals so it's the printout that's slightly larger, not allowing any of the layers below to be poking out or slightly skewed. If you didn't print the front of the card on both sides, it will show up white which is pretty noticeable, but because you printed it the same as the back, even if it is showing, you can't tell because it's the same colour and pattern as the Secret Mission or Action backs.

And it's the same reason for doing this technique on the front, because the back card is bigger, you will see a boarder, but if the backing card is printed with the front... then it's not obvious that it's not cut accurately, etc, etc.

You can see in the top image with the cards on the right - if I printed the back paper with a black boarder on the side facing up, then you wouldn't see the white board which gives it away as being the custom card. From the back however, pretty convincing.

Now I see them side by side, I can see I've got the font size set to small for the description and quote!

Other than that, you might guess they're from the same pack!

I can't do much about the Italic font in the quote - you have no idea how fiddly that was to implement. Apparently word processors/art apps implement their own italic algorithm because it's not always a separate font; one of the small things Rivet Wars has taught me! I had to rotate each character 1 degree on it's central axis.

For the super crazy OCD types like myself, if you really want these awesome custom cards to fit in to the standard game, I suggest heading over to makeplayingcards.com and have them printed up on real cards!

Once I get all my minis and custom buildings and objectives painted I will be doing this.